星期二：The day I left, really the whole week before, was pretty emotional as it was filled with goodbyes. After arriving at the airport extra early in the morning, I had to say goodbye to my parents, which was super hard, then jump on a plane to Philadelphia. After hanging out alone in the Philly airport for over three hours, I was finally on a tiny airplane to NYC where our NSLI-Y group would have our pre-departure orientation.
Once in NYC, I met up with my fellow NSLI-Y scholar, Becca, and we embarked on a terribly jolting bus journey through rush hour traffic to our hotel. After surviving the ride, the two of us met up with our six other fellow students, Mackenzie, Heather, Anthony, Liam, Pablo, and Joey, our resident director for the year, Kripa, and the whole iEARN USA group, our implementing organization. We all played some games in a park for awhile, then we students, plus a few alums, headed to Ben and Jerry's to bond over ice cream.
(Picture with my parents before leaving DFW)
星系三：After not really recovering from all that travel, we all woke up early the next day for a full day of orientation. Overall it was just a really long day, but, it was worth it in the end as the iEARN team took us out to a burger joint for our last American meal and treated us all to milkshakes (though I may or may not have just ordered monkey bread for dinner, sorry mom).
(A picture of all eight students plus our RD and two alums)
(Our last dinner in the U.S.)
星期四/五：Finally we were on our way to Taiwan! Along with our RD, Kripa, the eight of us headed to the airport to board our 14 hour flight to Tokyo. The plane ride itself was pretty much 14 hours of stiffness and boredom, but I did get to watch like 5 movies so I guess in the end it was decent. Once in Tokyo, we almost immediately boarded our 4 hour flight to Taipei (more stiffness and boredom) and then finally arrived in Taiwan. After meeting up with the iEARN Taiwan team, mainly Jenny, our local coordinator, and obtaining some Taiwanese fast food, I ate an interesting shrimp burger, we boarded the bullet train to Kaohsiung. Sadly it was dark outside so I couldn't really enjoy the speed of the bullet train, but it was cool to say that I have been on a train going 200ish mph. Overall our trip from NYC to Kaohsiung turned out to take 28 hours and 17 minutes (Anthony timed it), so, needless to say, we all crashed once we reached our hotel.
(All of us packed and ready to head out)
(Last picture of the group in the U.S., pretty much summarizes the group dynamic)
(the clouds above Taipei as we're landing)
星期å…：After a good breakfast of dumplings, buns, and fruit, we had our arrival orientation with the iEARN Taiwan team. Mostly it was another long day but we went out for some hot pot for lunch and I got a delicious kimchi flavor (hot pot is a dish where you literally cook everything in your own personal pot of boiling soup). For dinner we went to an "American" restaurant that was pretty interesting, for example, the salad involved raisins and mayo.
(breakfast is my favorite meal, so this made me pretty happy)
(a few of us took some time to start exploring the city)
(a terrible picture from our hot pot lunch)
(happened across a temple in an alleyway)
星期天：Sunday was a pretty big day. After lots more orientation and getting to Skype with two more alums, we finally got to meet our host families. The families all had to play a game where they had to look at eight silhouettes of all the students and decide which one their student was while all of us hid in a corner. My family went first, guessed correctly, and greeted me with an adorable sign and lots of hugs. My family has the two parents, a 20 year-old son, and an daughter who is also 18. We then went to their apartment which is literally in the center of the city, right by a big mall and arena, so that's super cool. They showed me around the apartment and then we headed out for some dumplings. My host family is so nice and enthusiastic, so I already felt pretty comfortable with them even after just a few hours.
(my host family, they're amazing)
(this is the sign my host sister made to welcome me)
(they fed me yellow watermelon which I thought was cool)
(the view from my bedroom window)